Eternal Sleeper
by Slavedriver
Summary: The raw, unedited version of a fanfic I wrote in 2002. Based on comments, it might be refined.
1. Chapter 1

_"There are few things more alien in this universe than the mind of a traitor - Adeptus Logis Arquebius"_

The grey-tinged rain beat against the Glas-tech windows in steady sheets, almost drowning out the tuneless wails of the motley band of musicians the establishment laughingly referred to as "The Entertainment". A local woman had clambered onstage in a drunken haze, and proceeded to add her own vocal talents to the meagre accomplishments of the three youths who seemed to be playing entirely seperate pieces. Zan Kalleq scowled as the vox-amplifier picked up the signal from the mistuned electrophone, resulting in a squealing peal of feedback that seemed to cut beyond his hearing and instead register as a grinding in the back of his skull. Sensing that they had outstayed their welcome, the musicians hastily bade their farewells, and scurried out to a back room, their disappearance met with a few sparse, laconic handclaps and a murmur of discontent. Why in the name of Terra had Halorum requested to meet on this backwater rock anyhow, considering all the places open to him? Kalleq sighed and went to finish his synthliq, stopping inches from his lips when he saw the bloated bug nestled in the dregs of his glass, and tossed it dejectedly to the floor. Burying his face in his hands, he cursed the day he had ever agreed with Kuarl Halorum to take this job, easy as it had sounded on the vidlog screen - right now all he wanted was a warm bed, a hot meal and preferably a member of the opposite sex to keep him company. A flicker of a smile played over his lips as he imagined these luxuries, and he sank back into his chair, awaiting the arrival of his companion.

_It had been almost three weeks now since Salim DeLocke and his sister Jenna had run away from their home to join their new family. Born into luxury, wanting for nothing, they had been dulled by the constant lack of adventure and spontaniety by the restrictions advocated by their father, and after 18 years of stifling oppression, Salim could take no more. He always had dreams of becoming a mercenary, a pirate, a rogue trader - as a child he had threatened the serving girls with his ThermoPlas cutlass, only a toy but wielded with such enthusiasm that he had put two in the medical quarters before his father had forbidden him access to such playthings. And Jenna... well, Jenna had always been a dreamer. Romantic ideals of finding a handsome _and_ wealthy trader to sweep her off her feet had always been in her dreams throughout her childhood and now as she entered adulthood, they seemed to haunt her every waking moment too. Of course, her pragmatist mother had told her not to be so silly, that such things only ever happen in stories for little children, not in the lives of real women - and besides, she was to be engaged Master Lukas Hass, youngest of the once resplendent Hass dynasty. Nowadays they had a reputation for gambling, fraud and extremely shady business deals... and Lukas was the worst of the family: short tempered, scarred from countless drunken brawls and uglier than a marsh-grox in a slaughterhouse._

_So... now they were here, in the pouring rain, dressed in the stinking layers that had served as clothes for the last nineteen days, emaciated from lack of food, rusty stains on their outfits showing where Salim had managed to catch a wild nandabite for a few mouthfuls of meat charred over barely glowing embers - and hoping that their adventure would have a happy ending after all. They had heard hearsay from the more loose-lipped servants of a band of adventurers wandering in the wilderness of Dolar Tertius and decided to stake everything on a new life - but surely they couldn't keep going for much longer. _

_Salim cocked his ear and gestured his sister to be silent... that couldn't be...? He broke into a run, dragging Jenna behind him as he ploughed through the vegetation, hope spurring on new reserves of energy. Breathless, they staggered out into a fire-lit clearing, shielded from the deluge by wide branches lashed together overhead, where a group of about 14 figures, clad only in diaphonous white robes stood, hands linked, and singing clearly into the night air. A young woman with glittering purple eyes turned to Salim, and offered a smile that he was powerless to avoid returning. Finally... they had arrived._

Dripping wet, but with a broad grin on his doughy features, Halorum took his seat opposite Kalleq and ordered a synthliq. "Zan old man! You look terrible!" the fat man exclaimed with a wink, "What _have_ you been doing to yourself?". Kalleq sighed wearily, but couldn't keep the corners of his mouth turning up in a wry smile. "It's good to see you again - I thought you weren't going to turn up at all, but obviously the lure of those Imperials won over your cowardice?" Halorum took mock umbrage at this slight - it was an old routine between friends, the truth being that they'd worked together for so long, and known each other longer, that it was impossible to imagine it being any different. They get a job, they finish the job, they enjoy the spoils... it had been that way for nigh on ten standard years now, and didn't show any signs of stopping anytime soon.

"So, what's the story, mother?" Halorum cooed, before bursting into raucous laughter. Kalleq reached into an inner pocket of his battered flight jacket, a souvinier of a past jobs long ago, and pulled out a handheld archive viewer and a slim chip. "_This_ is our story. If we can pull this one off, we won't need to lift a finger for months... maybe even years." he slotted the chip into the device and placed it in the table beween him and his companion. A blank panel on the viewer jumped into life, first displaying the ComTel company logo, then the crest of the family DeLocke. Halorum let out a small gasp of breath at the sight of the coat of arms, and Kalleq could see he was impressed, despite having already been given a cursory brief on this commission. An image swam into view, first an unclear, ghostly image, then as the camera focused on it, the features became distinct - a woman, pale, eyes red from crying by the looks of it, good features, if a little skinny. Halorum adjusted the speaker control to little more than a whisper above the bustle of the bar, and both men leaned in to listen. "He-hello? Is this recording? Very well... gentlemen? I assume you already know why you have this message, I spoke to a mutual friend who recommended you highly..." Halorum nudged Kalleq's arm and grinned at this endorsement, Kalleq hissing his displeasure at the interruption. "...done this type of work before, but this time we need your services most urgently. You already know that you are to find a missing person - in actual fact, this isn't quite true. Both our children have... have..." At this point the pale woman's facade of calm broke down and she wept openly. "...please, please find them... find our babies and you can name your price... please..." The screen froze and faded to dull grey.

"So... two kiddies ready to be picked up and taken home, eh? Sounds just like my kind of deal, especially if you hear the words 'Name your price' as well!" Halorum fidgeted in his seat excitedly. "You see, if it's as easy as I think it's gonna be, we'll be sitting back and sipping imported Redfang this time next week!"

The fat man leant forward conspiratorially and spoke in hushed tones. "I had a word with some of my... contacts... in the shipping lanes. Seems a small vessel, a survey craft apparently, was tracked to the surface of Dolar Tertius - about 5 klicks north of here. And I'll give you three guesses where the flight path originated?" Kalleq shook his head, although he was sure what Halorum was about to say. "Caelentor Prime! Right outside the DeLocke's door! If my sources are correct, they must have just sneaked out, made their way to the Light hangar just outside the grounds, and come here, though the Emperor alone knows what they'd want on this mudball!" Kalleq took all this in, then a puzzled look crept over his face. "So why wasn't a search made on the surface for the craft? If these DeLockes are so important, then surely someone would have acted on all this information?" Halorum's face was set in a smug grin as he shook his head. "Not so, old man, not so! As you may have noticed - it's the rainy season," he swept a thick hand at the buffetted viewports and let out a bark of laughter "And finding a shuttle that may or may not have taken these kids off-planet, in these conditions, to a low-ranking family who hardly govern a square klick on a planet the other side of the sector is not high on the agenda for these guys. I heard they have some other problems to deal with. _Nasty_ problems, if you get what I mean" Halorum tapped the side of his nose and chuckled. "So, Zan my man, this means that we have this all to ourselves - and remember, "Name your price". It doesn't get much better than this!"

_Since being inducted into the group, Salim and Jenna had been made to feel like they were family. Their bellies filled with exotic meats, procured from some unknown source, and given wine that made their heads spin. They were led back to a huge artifice made entirely of pure white marble, breathtakingly beautiful, and given beds, softer than any they'd ever experienced before. The following days passed as if a dream, bathing in perfumed unguents, eating and drinking anything they desired, sleeping out the remnants of their time in the the wilderness. But still, there were times when they were almost ignored, shut in their quarters while the rest of their new friends retired into rooms unseen. After several days of being alternately pampered and abandoned, Salim confronted the girl with the purple eyes and demanded to know what was being done behind their backs. Instead of a reply, the girl pushed his back to a wall and gently pressed her lips to his, before breaking off and turning away with a subtle smile. Dazed, yet aroused, Salim followed her as she tiptoed delicately through an ornate doorway._

Zan had been cruising in the shuttlecab for almost two standard hours now, and as far as he could see, they weren't getting anywhere. The absense of landmarks, natural or artificial made navigating through the sparse wilderness a thankless job. Praise the Emperor for small mercies, he thought - at least there was a semblance of a track beaten down by the migrations of whatever beasts lived in this place, and at least the shuttlecab was warm. But how long before they were forced to make their way on foot? He shivered and squinted through the tempered plaspex of the drivescreen as if to make out something in the endless gloom stretching out in front of them.

Halorum was peering intently at a small tracking device, not standard issue to the public but he had managed to get hold of one via one of his many contacts. If a Citizen was found in possession of one of these, there was no telling what would happen to them - the Inquisition wasn't too keen on anyone else having too much knowledge, and this multiband tracker gave more knowledge than even the loosest lipped informant. Suddenly a faint keening sound emanated from the voxspeaker and a red pulse appeared in the corner. Haloran's face split into a wide grin as he realised that he had picked up what was almost certainly their prize. "We've hit the big time, my friend! Bearing of 297, distance... looks like about 4 klicks. Anything this solid has to be the craft!" Kalleq drifted the transport between a pair of twisted and gnarled trunks on the left, disappearing into the murky night beyond.

_It had only been two days since it happened, but already it seemed like forever. Salim had followed the girl behind the doorway, and then... He struggled to remember exactly what had happened. The only things that could be recalled were a sensation of spinning on air and a heady musk unlike anything he had ever smelt. Even now, thinking back to it caused his head to ache uncontrollably, and he lay down again and closed his eyes. After that...whatever had happened, he had woken up back in his bed - and at his side was the girl with purple eyes. He grinned with the thoughts of what acts he must have commited in his fugue - both their clothes had been in disarray, and he had ached... by the Emperor, he had ached! And of course, there were the marks. Nails across his upper arms, scuffs of ropes along his wrists, and even the faint but still-present indents of teeth on his chest. Peering down at his body again, a look of puzzlement crossed his face - if he didn't know better, he could have sworn they were animal bites._

Halorum paused for breath, leaning against the ruined stump of a long dead tree as lightning crashed in the heavens above. Kalleq sighed inwardly and not for the first time wished that his friend had been a little less indulgent in his youth - all the decadent revelry and unfettered hedonism of the young Kuarl Halorum was coming back to haunt him now. Not like me, Zan mused wryly. Back then, when all his contempories were brawling and sinking enough toxins to numb even one of the Masters, Zan only had the desire to better himself. He managed to talk his way into being trained in general weapons usage by a crippled veteran of the Cthonian battalions, reduced to a walking shell by his experiences, who successfully deserted and just disappeared into the morass that was his home society. Once he felt confident enough, he had constantly stived to put himself to the test - he joined the hive militia on Tantalus, his own personal crusade to clean up the underlevels coming to an abrupt end when corrupt 'officers' ambushed him and beat him to within a hair's breadth of his life for disrupting the flow of bribes; He had spent a short stint as a Bounty Hunter, tracking known felons - until he had bitten off more than he could chew and gone after Rahamin Giza, the self styled Lord of a Thousand Knives who had set up a camp on Arianis. He had only just made it away alive when his contact failed to mention that Giza had stationed just under a hundred fanatical underlings to protect him. He still managed to fulfill his contract when one of his stray las-rounds richocheted and drilled into a crate packed to the brim with looted grenades, but after that... surely one person's luck can't last forever? A cry of help snapped him from his reminiscings and into his current plight - Halorum had somehow slipped and become buried up to his thighs in a thick mudbowl, slipping further down with every movement he made. "Zan! Help me out here!" The fat man's face was contorted in a mask of fear, so comical that Kalleq had to force his lips together to avoid bursting into laughter at the sight. "Hold on tight," Zan grasped his companion's forearm and pulled him bodily from the morass with an audiable sucking sound. "And for the love of the Emperor, watch where you're going!"

_It seemed that there were no tears left in his body to cry, yet some hot moisture still forced itself through his eyes. How had he managed to get into this situation? Salim choked back a rising of bile in his throat and attempted to focus his vision through the blur. He could make out a number of figures - four, maybe five? - standing in a semicircle around him, laughing and cooing at his prone figure. One of them stepped round out of his line of sight, and he immediately felt a flash of agony writhe down his back as his bonds were tightened and his body stretched further. At first he had gone along with it, thinking it could be a new experience - and he was willing to perform almost any act for the girl with the purple eyes - but it had degenerated into this, strapped into manacles and hung from the low ceiling, tendons and muscles stretched almost to breaking point, joints screaming in flaring pain as they began to seperate. Salim gritted his teeth against a scream as he felt his shoulders ease away from their sockets, and - then it stopped. A wave of relief and pleasure soaked through his broken frame as his muscles relaxed and he was able to take deep breaths once more. Daring to look again he saw the girl with the purple eyes glide back in front of him, smiling her dazzling smile, and suddenly everything was perfect._

In the grey-yellow light of the clearing, the building seemed to stretch into the twisted trees as far as Zan could see, and seemed as incongruous as a dancing girl in a convent. The walls, pure blocks of marble by the looks of them, didn't so much look clean as gleam spotlessly, a state sharply at odds with the encroaching jungle. Pillars at least 50 feet tall held up fascias and balconies jutting from all faces, giving the impression of a number of temples joined into one leviathan structure. Set into the side facing Kalleq was an enormous archway, through which he could see a great torchlit hall, stretching into darkness. Zan turned to Halorum, who merely shrugged and motioned to proceed up the stairs. Something about this place felt wrong, very wrong, something so blindingly obvious that it took Kalleq the time to scurry to the archway before he realised exactly what it was. The fact that it was there in the first place, uncharted, just happening to be in the very spot that they were looking - and that it should by all rights be ancient, but it gleamed almost unaturally, even in the low level luxbeams of the cab. Every sense in his body screamed at him to get out of there, that it wasn't worth it, to just cut his losses and run.

He looked back for Halorum, but he wasn't there. Turning, Zan saw the fat man already standing in the shadows of one of several naves leading from the great hall, looking at him almost as if he wasn't there. "You seem in a hurr-" Zan started, but stopped dead. The short hairs on the back of his neck rose up when he saw the smile on the face of his companion, the smile a hungry predator gives to its prey seconds before the kill. He stepped backwards once, twice, spun around only to be confronted by a line of youths, outfitted in white flowing garments and carrying lengths of plasteel and masonry. Halorum chuckled behind him, a humourless laugh that was ridiculously high pitched, yet with an edge that suggested less than total sanity. Looking back at the fat man, Kalleq saw he had drawn his stubber, and had it aimed directly between his eyes. "I'm sorry Zan, really I am..." murmured Halorum insincerely, then grinned even wider as his eyes flickered behind Zan's left shoulder. A second later, Kalleq's vision exploded into a flare of brightness as he was struck from behind, then darkness claimed him.


	2. Chapter 2

_Salim felt a shudder of self-hatred course through his body as he realised what he had done. He had led his sister here on the pretext of finding adventure, but... this is how it had transpired. After the intense pain of the manacles, he had been set free by the girl, and led to a high chambered room, decked in luxurious silks and plush tapestries. It was there that the girl and two others pushed him back onto a soft pile of cushions, and disrobed. He had thought he was in heaven, a _real_ adventure - until he had glanced over at a huge windowed wall and seen Jenna in the adjacent room. She was buried under several male bodies, but he could see into her eyes and could read the terror and anguish contained within. His lust extinguished, Salim pushed himself to his feet and struggled into his robe, repulsing the bodies, so tempting before, with undisguised contempt. As he ran for the door, the girl with purple eyes stood and called his name once - softly, yet seeming to carry over every other sound. For a second, he faltered; seeing the disapproval in her eyes tore at his heart and he longed to return to her, and be forgiven for this transgression. Her eyes seemed to bore into his very soul, but he thought of his sister, and ripped his eyes away from hers, running through the archway and to his chamber._

_He rifled desperately through the layers of bedsheets, knowing what he was looking for - and praying to whoever might be listening that these twisted sociopaths hadn't found it. But under one corner, just above the soft matress he found a small device only a couple of inches across. When they had set out, he had laughed at his sister's insistence of taking a tracking beacon, saying it was unecessary if they wanted a real adventure. But when Jenna had threatened to inform their father of his plan, he grudgingly agreed to take it; now he was never so glad of anything in his life. Thumbing the trigger switch, a small series of LEDs lit up, indicating a silent transmission on the encoded personal family frequency. Salim breathed a sigh of relief as he buried the tracker back under the corner of the sheets and knew that whatever happened now, it wouldn't be long until his family dispatched the authorities to reclaim them, and the worse that he had to face would be the wrath of his father. A noise behind him made him whirl around to see the girl with purple eyes, flanked by two thick set males. The girl was smiling again, but this time it chilled him rather than aroused._

Kalleq's mind swum with half-dreams of betrayal and intrigue before he was jerked awake with a flash of light. His mind fell back into his body and his eyes unsealed before slamming shut again to keep out the blinding glare of a lightbar held inches from his face. Kuarl Halorum stood over his seated form and swung the back of his fist into the corner of Zan's mouth with a meaty crack, wiping his knuckles on his thigh. "So, old man - have a pleasant sleep?" Halorum spat into Kalleq's face, saliva mixing with blood and running down Zan's face. Zan jerked his arm forward to wipe his face clean but his tied wrists caught and his elbows slammed against the tall backed chair.

"What in the name of the Emperor are you playing at, Kuarl?" Kalleq muttered through split lips. "We were on a job - Why are you doing this?". Halorum looked patronisingly down at him and giggled. "You just don't understand, do you? You think it was a coincidence we just happened to find this place just where we looked? You were a fool, Zan - always thinking you could ride whatever life threw at you and shape it to suit yourself." Halorum turned off the lightbar, letting Zan open his eyes and slowly focus to the dim light of the small room. Built like a cell, about ten standard cubits square - it was as bleak and grey as an airless moon and almost as forboding. Kalleq squinted to see that what before had looked like pillars in each corner were in fact human figures, dressed in the same white flowing outfits as the ones who had confronted him earlier. "But you're wrong, Kalleq, so wrong you can't see _why_ you're wrong. You don't take what destiny hands you, you take it all and let destiny shape itself around you. _This_ is the way of power, this is the way of the chosen!" Halorum had a glint in his eye that scared Kalleq, not because of the madness but because there was still sanity. He knew exactly what he was doing, and gleefully embraced his treachery as if it was the most natural thing in the galaxy. Halorum turned away for a moment, undoing the front of his tunic, then turned back with his torso exposed. On his chest were a series of cuts and weals from old burns, curving and sensuous designs that marked out a crude sigil in a rough human figure. Halorum grinned with his teeth. "You see, old man - it wasn't destiny that led you here. It wasn't fate, it wasn't luck or coincidence." He lent forward, close enough for Kalleq to smell sweat and the tang of blood on his breath. "It was me."

Zan had first met Kuarl Halorum in Ganymede Hive, when he was hunting a cult leader deep in the lower levels on behalf of the Vice-Governer of the upper dome. The Governer had been abducted - presumed dead - and more and more citizens were going missing. Bodies were found with all blood drained out of them, anaemic husks that even the hiverats wouldn't touch. That had been his first big job, until then he had only been a glorified bodyguard and delivery boy. But this one - he had resorted to seeking help and found it in a bar in the slums of Icthus Sector. Kuarl Halorum... at first Kalleq had been wary of just how useful an overweight hedonist could be, but he had proved his worth on that mission alright. Halorum had used what he referred to as "His people" to gain information on the movement of the so-called 'Exsanguinate Brotherhood'; He had provided movements, times, locations - everything that Kalleq needed to set up an ambush for the Grand High Demagogue and his rabble. What had impressed and surprised Zan in equal measures was the insistence that Halorum go along with him and see some action - He had claimed that an ambush would need two people to work, but the look on his face when he opened fire convinced Kalleq that there was a personal agenda against those blood cultists. Even when the last man alive had thrown down his arms and surrendered, Halorum raised his stubber and drilled him through the left eye. Since then, Halorum and Kalleq had agreed that they would work as a loose partnership, looking out for each other and contacting in the event of a juicy job... and it had grown from there into a solid business. But that was then, and this was now.

"Tell me, Zan my dear, have you ever heard of the Eternal Sleepers?" The name seemed to awaken memories in the back of Kalleq's mind, things that he knew but couldn't quite remember; the answer seeming to be just out of his reach, slipping from his grasp like an eel, when a dim recollection bubbled to the surface of his conciousness. The Eternal Sleepers, a name from years ago, when he was still escorting minor adepts and local government lackeys. He had heard rumours of a group of followers of some obscure religion, one that started as a band of hedonists and slowly but surely grew into a full-blown cult worshipping every vice and perversion imaginable. They were supposedly stamped out when a full scale siege had been declared by the hive arbitrators, action that had struck Zan as being strangly heavy handed for a local cult. And that symbol, it had been found daubed onto walls and cut into corpses found after terrible assaults, but as soon as an example was found the authorities went to great pains to have it eradicated, as if it's very presence was a crime. Halorum saw the realisation dawn on Kalleq's face and continued. "Ah, I see you're not a complete idiot. Yes, you do remember us, but I doubt if you really understand what we are. When I first discovered the glory of the Sleepers I was young, wild - everything was a new experience and all things were a window of sensual opportunity. All these years haven't dimmed my tast for the pleasures of life, but now I've come to understand the _real_ meaning of the Sleepers. Power, Zan! As I said, power to take everything and make destiny your personal slave!" Halorum's voice, although not loud, had taken an excited and breathless quality. "Those fools who were killed by the pawns of the Emperor were weak, but some of us, we managed to escape and we became strong. Some of us recieved visions, dreams telling us how to serve our lord better; how to escape the authorities' next moves; where to run and when to fight. When I first worked with you, do you think I did it for the money? I had orders to wipe out that group of savages from the High Priestess, heathen scum that they were, and it was her that directed us, that provided you with your precious information. Just as I had to work alongside you to eradicate anyone who posed a threat to us... Ah, you look shocked, Zan? But of course those jobs you helped me with helped me, why else would I execute them? Dangerous officials, strayed flocks, the deluded followers of that repulsive blood tribe - you helped us with all of them, and I suppose that we all here owe you a vote of thanks," Halorum swept his arm across the room at the other figures, who laughed quietly "but you've outlasted your usefulness. You're not the kind to easily convert, and letting you go would be disasterous for us, so that leaves us with one choice." Kuarl Halorum's grin widened further as the door opened and the girl with purple eyes glided in.

_The small craft passed through the empty vacuum with no resistance as it sped toward the signal being put out by the beacon. The family DeLocke hadn't wanted to alert Imperial Authorities for fear of their missing being formally charged with theft and whatever other ridiculous accusations the judges would impose, but they had a small garisson of guards, used for security purposes. The homing beacon from the missing DeLocke children had been picked up from the Light hangar and forwarded to the living quarters, where a tear stained mother and ashen father had given instructions to retrieve them at any cost. Those filthy hunters were already on the case, but now they weren't needed, so the guards would be able to persuade them to give up the case and forget about charging any expenses to the DeLocke household._

_The transport broke orbit with a shudder, and the guards inside prepared for the impending disembark. They had been warned that the two bounty hunters had seemed unruly characters and might put up resistance at being relieved from duty - the fat one had probably attempted to attack Miss Jenna and caused the source of the distress signal in the first place. Sergeant Celan pressed a stud on the side of his light helmet, causing a mirrored faceguard to slide down, completely masking his face and rendering him somehow less than human. Strapped to his padded uniform was a small sidearm and a length of black plasteel tubing. As he grasped it and thumbed a small trigger on the handle of the shock maul, the core shot out to triple the length. He swung a few times with it as small sparks played up and down the striking end of the weapon, before flicking the retraction switch and clipping it to his belt. He watched as the five other guards lowered their visors and checked their armaments were in working order. The voxspeaker on the autoguidance informed that touchdown would occur in 30 seconds, the men strapping themselves into seats in preparation. The air outside began to whine, a hollow keening sound, as the outer shielding of the ship was ionised by the storm still raging on the surface, then a dull boom and a bone-jarring impact as the craft struck the ground. The bars over the seats retracted and the guards filed to the door as it began opening onto the night of Dolus Tertius._

The girl's eyes seemed to glow unnaturally, expanding into twin pools of light and flowing into each other until they alone filled Zan's vision. He felt his muscles relax, and a multitude of whispering voices conspire in the back of his hearing, entreating him to give himself over to the glory of the true power. Halorum untied his wrists, and watched gloatingly as Kalleq rose to his feet and shuffled unsteadily towards the girl. "I told you that you were weak, Kalleq," He spat at Zan. "You can't resist the merest temptation, can you? Just like you couldn't resist anything that could lead to a cheap Imperial in your pocket, and now you've sealed your own fate!" Halorum's words sounded to Kalleq as if they were spoken underwater, and the meaning was lost as they washed over his conciousness without being taken in. "You have to die, there's no other way... and the betrayal of trust, well - that's the sweetest pleasure of them all! I should be richly rewarded for this! It's time to join those other two fools!" Halorum wheezed with excited laughter that became a racking cough. Kalleq knew nothing of this, the girl was all. He was less than two standard cubits away from her when a sharp crack echoed from outside the room. All heads jerked in the direction of the doorway, the girl turning her head from Kalleq for a second. Immediately Kalleq's mind was clear; he charged the girl and struck her squarely in the midsection with his elbow, throwing her to the floor, before spinning and making a dash for the doorway as the girl struggled prone on the rough floor. The other three Sleepers finally lurched into action, launching themselves toward the doorway after Zan.

Kalleq ran as fast as he could, not knowing where he was going, anywhere but back. Behind him echoed the shouts and footfalls of at least three pursuers, maybe more had joined the chase, as he pounded along a low corridor lit only by sputtering torches and careered into the great hall he had been in before. Standing in the archway of the temple were six black and red clad figures, glassy mirrored face visors reflecting the flickering torchlight and clutching long crackling sticks and sleek handguns. One of them was holding his upper arm as if hurt, and lying on the floor was the body of a young man, about seventeen or eighteen, still clutching a long beam in both hands. The front of his white robe was stanied a deep crimson and several holes marked where the bullets had struck him. Kalleq threw his hands up and yelled at them not to shoot, then dived to the floor as the guards aimed their weapons at the approaching robed figures following. From his position on the floor he could see that several white figures were circling outside in the pouring night rain through the archway behind the guards. Zan tried to shout a warning, but it was drowned out by deafening reports of the gunfire. He dragged himself towards the group of guards just as one of the sodden cultists launched themselves onto the nearest with a bone-chilling scream of rage. The shiv in his hand, apparently fashioned out of a length of ceramite, sank deep into the stomach of the guard, leaving him breathing blood onto the marble floor and clutching his ruined gut. Celan drew his maul and swung it in a tight arc into the face of the killer, smashing teeth and cauterising skin. The youth went down, then dragged himself to his feet, an ecstatic, if bloodied, grin forced through his shattered mouth. Almost as one, the guards started to jog back to the archway, firing out into the darkness to clear the way as they did so; Kalleq stood up and bolted towards them before a wave of robed figures followed the guards out into the storm.

_"Man down! We have a man down! Look sharp, to your left Dryxen!" Celan barked orders over the helmet commlinks as they struggled back to their ship. They'd need the heavy weapons for this one, this wasn't just two rogue hunters, this was a grakking cult! He heard a thump behind him, turning he saw that Keylar Sparton had tripped on an unseen root, and had gone down heavily. He started towards the fallen guard before seeing that two of the damned freaks had caught up with him and swung their crude weapons at his helmet. The strengthened Armaplex visor withstood the first impact, but then developed a hairline crack, then another, until the helmet seemed to be a web of cracks spreading over his face. With a sickening crunch one of the cultists brought a pipe down, shattering through the visor and on into the guard's face. Celan felt nauseous. He had seen two of his guards - his comrades, his drinking buddies, and above all his friends - left to die on this forsaken rock. He was thirty seconds sprint from the transport when he heard his name called, as clear as if it was being transmitted over the commlink next to his ear. He paused and looked over his shoulder to see a young lady clad only in a thin white robe, which had become almost transparent with the deluge. She shot him a dazzling smile, and he faltered - he would go back to the ship soon, he just needed a closer look at those eyes._

Kalleq ran over to the body of the fallen guard in the doorway. He was curled up in the foetal position, as if to hide the ugly wound that had been torn in his belly. The sluggun was still clutched in one dead hand, and hopefully still loaded; Zan prised it free and ran out into the storm after the guards seconds before another group of cultists thundered out of a side corridor into the great hall.

In the mud and darkness of the rain it was hard to see what was happening, let alone find anyone who might be an ally. He could dimly see the grey-white of dirtied and soaked robes, seemingly scores of them milling in the confusion. He ran as fast as he could in the cloying slurry, as far away from the temple as he could, until he saw a large shape in the middle distance. As he bolted towards it with renewed vigour, a figure loomed out of the darkness in front of him. She started to smile at him, and he could see her eyes taking on the strange glow again. "Join me in eternal ecstacy..." she murmured, a sweet, low voice that made Zan ache. Closing his eyes to shut out the vision, he muttered one word. "No."

Zan Kalleq raised his gun and fired.

_Sergeant Celan was gone. The sergeant was gone. Celan was dead. The fact whirled around Syl Brandin's head as he tried to run as fast and as far as possible to get away from these madmen. Celan had gone back for something, which was suicide in Brandin's book. He didn't know why the sergeant had returned, but he thought he saw a woman standing next to him, the most beautiful woman he had seen. Then... he wasn't sure if he had seen what happened next, it was so dark he could have seen anything, but... The woman changed, one minute she was a lithe beauty, the next second she was - something else? He hair had receded, leaving her scalp completely bald; Her hands had grown enormous, like some monsterous landcrab; But her eyes, they were the worst. They had grown to at least ten times the size they should be, they were like huge glass balls, but they had glowed a sick purple colour, the colour of diseased organs. Celan seemed to not notice this, he even went to embrace it - Brandin shuddered at the thought - until it had attacked him. He seemed to be screaming in pleasure until it ripped his arm off._

_A cracking noise in front of him alerted him to the presence of more of those damned cultists. He knew it wasn't any of the other guard, he had seen them all cut down as he ran from the abomnation that killed the sergeant. Dryxen had seemingly lost his mind, and ploughed into a group of four of them, swinging his maul manically, before they took his legs out underneath him and he went down under a mass of bodies. And Grensal, well, he still didn't know exactly what had happened. One moment he was right in front of Brandin, the next he was face down with a metal spike buried in the back of his neck, but no-one in sight to have thrown it. That was when he had run and kept running, just to find some way off of this accursed planet. He checked the clip in his slugger - three rounds left, not good. Emerging out of the gloom in front of him were at least six youths, all grinning at him in a way that made him want to scream out loud. Stumbling backwards, he snapped off one shot, then another, feeling a small surge of accomplishment when two of the cultists fell in a tangle of limbs and bloodied robes. With despair and fear clouding his mind, he aimed his gun at on cultist, then another, before thumbing the visor catch on his helmet. Putting the barrel of the gun under his chin, he mouthed a silent prayer to whoever might be listening, for both his soul and those of his comrades, then fired._

Zan looked down at the body of the girl as she lay down in the muck. Although it was a point blank shot, the bullet hole seemed remarkably small and bloodless, it should have punched a hole right through her. Alarm bells rang in every corner of his mind, and he decided to leave this place as soon as possible. He pelted towards the ship, splashing through puddles and vaulting over fallen bodies until the reached the transport door. Stepping inside, he glanced outside, and went cold as he saw the girl's body was gone, a deep puddle in the mud the only trace of it ever being there. A movement out of the corner of his eye made him whirl round with his gun held out, to see he was aiming at Kuarl Halorum. The fat man was without his tunic, the bizarre scarring on his chest standing out lividly like a tattoo. He was bleeding from several wounds on his upper arms and his breath came out in ragged gasps, but he still wore a grin on his mud-spattered face. "Going somewhere, Zan my boy?" Halorum reached behind his waist for his weapon, but Kalleq had already fired by the time he reached the handle. Halorum's eyes bulged in their sockets as he realised he had been shot in the shoulder, and stumbled backwards, falling over his own legs and ending sitting in a deep pile of slime. For the first time he had known Halorum, Zan could see fear in the man's eyes, rather than the cocky bravado that usually accompanied his chuckles. To Kalleq's suprise, Halorum turned his face to the heavens and made a strange noise, halfway between a scream and howl, forcing Zan to cover his ears. "Oh great one, I beseech you - provide me with power now so I may do your bidding! I am your servant!" Halorum was discordantly yelling a garbled prayer to the skies, babbling in shock for one last chance to redeem himself. Kalleq lowered the pistol to Halorum's face, then dropped it in shock as he saw the bullet hole in the fat man's shoulder knit up and heal instantly. Halorum laughed in triumph and dragged himself to his feet as the gashes in his torso closed and his muscles seemed almost to bulge through his skin. Without warning, the laugh became a shrill shriek of pain as the muscles _were_ bulging, stretching Halorum's skin until it seemed it would snap. His tongue thickened and etruded from his mouth like an obscene serpent exiting a nest, and his fingers shrunk back into the flesh of his hand. Halorum fell to his knees in the mud, looking up at Kalleq before his eyes swelled and hung out of his face as if melting. With a sickening cracking noise, bulges along his ribs punched through his skin, barbed insectile legs extending from his body and whipping flagella poking from every facial orifice. There were sounds like a knife through meat as scores of tiny slits ripped open in his flesh, each one exposing minute rows of pointed teeth which ground on each other. Stumbling back in shock from this monstrocity, Zan raised his pistol and fired repeatedly into it, the bullets scoring deep furrows along the beast's back, but no blood flowed from the wounds.

The thing that once was Halorum bellowed an inarticulate roar or rage and swung a club-like limb at Kalleq, a single long claw extending from the end as it whistled inches from his chest. Kalleq feinted to the left, narrowly avoiding slipping on the now marshlike ground, before dodging to the right and toward the safety of the ship. The spawn swung once more, clipping his left shoulder and following through towards the hull of the ship. The single claw dug deep into one of the armoured panels set in the side, the beast ripping it clear with a grunt and taking a large section of the plating with it. The exposed circuitry fizzed and sparked in the pouring rain, and thick black smoke began to issue from a vent nearby. Kalleq fell through the doorway of the ship and punched the retract button, the heavy door slamming down with an resonating clang before the locks engaged. He staggered over to the control panel, clutching his wounded arm which seemed to cry out in pain with every movement he forced it through, and tapped a few controls. An authoritative female voice intoned from the voxspeakers set either side of him. "Cooling systems damaged. Essential repairs needed. Critical temperature attained in approximately three minutes." Zan cursed and forced himself to the technical readout monitor. It didn't look good - apparently the cooling circuits had been fried from exposure to the rain, and were ruined. He dared a look through the Armaplex door hatch, and came face to what remained of the face of Halorum. His eyes were now completely gone, replaced with more miniature mouths gnashing air in anticipation. Scales had formed on his hairless head and a long segmented tail stretched out behind him. Kalleq instictively ducked as the tail shot forward and smashed a network of cracks in the hatch. Looking around wildly, Kalleq set eyes on a large metal closet marked with danger symbols and stencilled with 'Ordnance'. Pulling hard at the handle, his arm was jarred as the door stayed resolutely shut, a small card reader to the side glowing an angry red. Again the scorpion's tail pounded the door, extending the cracks snaking their way across the window. Desperately searching through the small ship for anything to help, his stomach turned in terror as the ships female voice broke the monotonous seething of the rain once more. "Warning. Critical temperature attained in approximately one minute." Zan fell back against a door set in a small alcove, before spinning around and finding that it was he had hoped it was. He smashed the emergency activation button on the escape unit, feeling relief wash over him as the door slip noiselessly open to reveal a small pod with six seats. Taking his place in one of them, time seemed to move in slow motion as several things happened at once. The safety harness swung down over Kalleq's seat, firmly holding him in place. The window in the door finally gave in under the beast's incessant poundings. The voxspeaker warned that critical temperature had been attained. Kalleq flipped up the protective cap on the launch button, and hammered the large red button underneath as the spawn shambled through the remains of the shattered entrance. The pod door slid down moments before the twisted form reached the escape unit, sealing them apart and causing the creature to scream in unearthly rage. Kalleq felt the rumble of the launch tube and then was pushed down into his seat as the pod was propelled up at deorbitting velocity. The last thought he had was that he wouldn't be getting paid for this job, before he blacked out. He was unconcious when, on the planet's surface, the fusion cells in the ships engine overloaded and blasted the rear end apart, setting off the tactical weapons stored in the ordnance closet and causing a blast that scoured the planet surface in a radius of approximately 2 kilometres.

_From: Cpl. Du'an Fleisch_

_To: M. DeLocke_

_Re: Incident dated 189935.M41_

_Message Starts:_

_My Lady_

_Despite extensive searching in the rubble of the unknown building, and scouring of the scorched earth surrounding it for some time, we have as yet been unable to locate any trace of Mastar Salim. There have been several bodies recovered, but almost all have been negatively identified. There are three that are being tested for dental and genetic records, due to extreme burns and/or mutilation. We will of course inform you if any tests prove positive._

_Also note that we have found no traces of the bounty hunters hired several days before the incident. Again, no visual identification has proved positive, although more thorough testing is, as you can appreciate, impossible. May I suggest that if either of them did survive, the payment be waived and charges of fraud, deception, assault, theft and willful destruction of Imperial property be levelled against them._

_On a more positive note, we have found who we believe to be your daughter, Miss Jenna. She has recieved quite extensive injuries and is currently unconcious but recovering well in medlab. We hope that this boon offsets somewhat the disappointing results of the incident, and indeed, Miss Jenna should be returned to you within a week, completely healed. Our medical chief is somewhat concerned about potential damage to her eyes, but he assumes that it was caused by exposure to fumes and extreme light condition, and that the purple discolouration will disappear in time._

_Message ends._


End file.
